Warhammer: Age of Sigmar First Impressions

So Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is now in full swing. It’s an interesting game. The substantial departure from the iterative nature of the last four editions of Warhammer means that the game has changed entirely for better or worse. Some people like it, some people hate it, some people and some don’t know one way or the other. That being the case, I thought I’d give you my first impressions:

 

Context

The army I’ve chosen for Age of Sigmar is Stormcast Eternals, and my current pool of models come from the Age of Sigmar Boxed Set. I’m also participating in an 8-week ‘Slow-Grow’ league at my local game store Phoenix Games, where the wound limit for the games are going up in increments of 25 every 2 weeks. Therefore, these remarks refer to the fact that I’ve mainly played 25 wound games so far.

 

What I like

A lot of people complain about the apparent lack of strategy in the game, but as I was always rubbish at Warhammer anyway, I actually like the fact that the amount of strategic manoeuvres and choices you make in the game are reduced. On the balance of having so much strategic choice that you could potentially win the game before it starts just by choosing what models to have in your army and deploying them properly, and so little that the entire game is decided on dice rolls, Age of Sigmar definitely leans towards the latter but there is enough going on to keep a ‘casual’ gamer like me engaged.

My Lord-Relictor. Don't mess.

For example, for a 25 Wound force, I picked the Lord-Relictor, Three Retributors and Five Liberators. The rationale was: because I had eight models in the whole army, I was almost always going to be outnumbered. I therefore stuck the Retributors at the front, the Relictor at the back and the Liberators in-between. Therefore, the enemy force would have to tackle the Retributors first, who are deadly in combat. The Relictor could use his power to heal the Retributors to keep them in the fight a little longer, and the Liberators could mop up whoever was left afterwards. That’s been my strategy for the four games I’ve played so far and it works reasonably well.

I also like the way the combat works. It’s clear what you need to hit and wound – no faffing about with tables – so that bit’s simple. The challenge comes from deciding what order to do the fights in. It’s about second-guessing what order your opponent will do everything in, and what you can afford to lose. Do I use my one remaining Retributor, or my Liberators for my first attack? The Retributor probably won’t do much damage on his own and will leave the others open for an attack, but if he’s attacked, he won’t be able to fight at all. Do I attack the Khorgorath or the Blood Reavers? The Khorgorath is doing a lot of damage, but if I kill enough of the Blood Reavers, they may then fail their bravery check and I’ll take out even more in one turn. It’s these kind of decisions that make up the fun of the game for me so far.

What I don’t like

Currently the only thing I don’t like about the game mechanics are the balancing issues coming from having to integrate every faction into a brand new system. I know moaning about balancing issues in any Games Workshop game is like complaining that grass is green, but in previous editions they tried, at least. In Age of Sigmar, you can take anything, no matter how elite or rare they purport to be, as long as they’re in the same faction. And even then, they’ve lumped a lot of the factions together so their war scrolls can be combined. You don’t even need to take a commander model, since you can nominate any model as a general. My first game of AoS didn’t go too well, as the guy I was playing used an Empire force of an Elector Count, three Demigryffs and a Hellblaster Cannon, and there was not a single modicum of restrictions in the rules to stop him.

Needless to say I enjoy it a lot more when there is some balance in the chosen forces!

Conclusion

Age of Sigmar is a very different experience to Warhammer. There’s less going on than I might expect from a conventional wargame, but as I’m not very good at them, I’m kind of enjoying this ‘lite’ version of it. There will be questions raised about balancing issues; there always are. But when I’ve won, I feel like I deserved it because of my force selection and manoeuvres, and I’ve been having a decent amount of fun with it. I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops!